Two Miramar police officers go on trial for official misconduct

Prosecutors say they trespassed, falsified reports

December 13, 2011|By Rafael A. Olmeda, Sun Sentinel

Fort Lauderdale — — Two Miramar police officers used a drug suspect's own key to get into his apartment without a warrant and without his permission, and that put the cops on the wrong side of the law, prosecutors said Tuesday.

But defense attorney Alberto Milian described them as good cops trying to keep drugs out of a residential neighborhood. "The gross stupidity of the government in investigating a case of two honest police officers has resulted in a travesty of justice," he said.

A jury listened to opening statements in the case against Detective Jennifer Conger and Officer Jean Paul Jacobi, both of whom were suspended without pay from their jobs at the Miramar Police Department after another officer, Jason Prigmore, reported the alleged misconduct in July 2010.

"Prigmore experienced great anxiety as he crossed what he knew as the blue line," said Assistant State Attorney David Schulson, the lead prosecutor on the case. Schulson said Jacobi, who joined the Miramar Police Department in 2003, had arrested suspected drug dealer Reginald Beldor after a traffic stop, and Beldor's car was to be forfeited.

The car keys, on the same ring as Beldor's apartment key, ended up with Conger, who handed them to Jacobi when officers went to the apartment on the 2400 block of Centergate Drive, Schulson said. While Jacobi claimed in police reports that the door was ajar and that he smelled marijuana inside the apartment, in reality he and Conger got inside without legal authority, using the key, Schulson said.

"At that point they crossed the line from officers upholding the law to officers breaking the law," the prosecutor said. Prigmore reported Conger and Jacobi to Internal Affairs within hours.

Conger and Jacobi are charged with trespassing, falsifying reports and official misconduct.

Milian, who used variations of the word "stupid" to describe the case against the officers at least six times during his hourlong opening statement, immediately attacked the prosecutors, the whistleblower and the drug suspect.

Milian said Prigmore, whom he compared to the bumbling television deputy Barney Fife, got lost on his way to the suspect's house and could not be trusted to accurately tell what happened. And he said Beldor was a drug runner whose deal with prosecutors gave him a license to get back on the street to peddle marijuana.

The trial of Conger and Milian began a week after the conviction of former Hollywood Police Officer Dewey Pressley on two misdemeanor counts of falsifying reports. Pressley, who was acquitted of more serious official misconduct and conspiracy charges, is due to be sentenced Dec. 21.